Sadness

If you had known
When listening with her to the far-down moan
Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,
And rain came on that did not hinder talk,
Or damp your flashing facile gaiety
In turning home, despite the slow wet walk
By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;
If you had known

You would lay roses,
Fifty years thence, on her monument, that discloses
Its graying shape upon the luxuriant green;
Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there,
What might have moved you? yea, had you foreseen
That on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone where
The dawn of every day is as the close is,
You would lay roses!

A sloop of amber slips away
Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy.

Be void of feeling!
A heart that soon is stirr'd,
Is a possession sad
Upon this changing earth.

Behrisch, let spring's sweet smile
Never gladden thy brow!
Then winter's gloomy tempests
Never will shadow it o'er.

Lean thyself ne'er on a maiden's
Sorrow-engendering breast.
Ne'er on the arm,
Misery-fraught, of a friend.

Already envy
From out his rocky ambush
Upon thee turns
The force of his lynx-like eyes,

Stretches his talons,
On thee falls,
In thy shoulders
Cunningly plants them.

Strong are his skinny arms,
As panther-claws;
He shaketh thee,
And rends thy frame.

Death 'tis to part,
'Tis threefold death
To part, not hoping
Ever to meet again.

Thou wouldst rejoic...

The sun was streaming in: I woke, and said,
"Where is my wife, - that has been made my wife
Only this year?" The casement stood ajar:
I did but lift my head: The pear-tree dropped,
The great white pear-tree dropped with dew from leaves
And blossom, under heavens of happy blue.

My wife had wakened first, and had gone down
Into the orchard. All the air was calm;
Audible humming filled it. At the roots
Of peony bushes lay in rose-red heaps,
Or snowy, fallen bloom. The crag-like hills
Were tossing down their silver messengers,
And two brown foreigners, called cuckoo-birds,
Gave them good answer; all things else were mute;
An idle world lay listening to their talk,
They had it to themselves.
    What ails my wife?
I know not if aught ails her; though her...

Dormered and verandaed, cool,
Locust-girdled, on the hill;
Stained with weather-wear, and dull-
Streak'd with lichens; every sill
Thresholding the beautiful;

I can see it standing there,
Brown above the woodland deep,
Wrapped in lights of lavender,
By the warm wind rocked asleep,
Violet shadows everywhere.

I remember how the Spring,
Liberal-lapped, bewildered its
Acred orchards, murmuring,
Kissed to blossom; budded bits
Where the wood-thrush came to sing.

Barefoot Spring, at first who trod,
Like a beggermaid, adown
The wet woodland; where the god,
With the bright sun for a crown
And the firmament for rod,

Met her; clothed her; wedded her;
Her Cophetua: when, lo!
All the hill, one breathing blur,
Burst ...

Keep for the Young the impassioned smile
Shed from thy countenance, as I see thee stand
High on that chalky cliff of Britain's Isle,
A slender volume grasping in thy hand
(Perchance the pages that relate
The various turns of Crusoe's fate)
Ah, spare the exulting smile,
And drop thy pointing finger bright
As the first flash of beacon light;
But neither veil thy head in shadows dim,
Nor turn thy face away
From One who, in the evening of his day,
To thee would offer no presumptuous hymn!

I

Bold Spirit! who art free to rove
Among the starry courts of Jove,
And oft in splendour dost appear
Embodied to poetic eyes,
While traversing this nether sphere,
Where Mortals call thee Enterprise.
Daughter of Hope! her favourite Child,
Whom...

The cold green rocks and lapping waves
Are all my world as here I sit
With downcast eye and heart that craves
The bush and blue sky over it.

The tide of years is washing by,
The misty water drifts between
A soul with wings that may not fly
And shadowy realms that might have been.

Too late, too late, alas, I know
The track that winds by shining leaves
From where the flood reflects, below,
The greyness of the heart that grieves.

Another yet may tread the way,
And offer at that hidden shrine
His gift of rolled and twisted clay,
And set his lips to holy wine.

Another yet may tinge the flame
Upon that altar blue or red,
And freely call upon Her name,
And taste at will the blessed bread.

The waves are grey about the ...

Forth to his study the sculptor goes
    In a mood of lofty mirth:
"Now shall the tongues of my carping foes
    Confess what my art is worth!
In my brain last night the vision arose,
    To-morrow shall see its birth!"

He stood like a god; with creating hand
    He struck the formless clay:
"Psyche, arise," he said, "and stand;
    In beauty confront the day.
I have sought nor found thee in any land;
    I call thee: arise; obey!"

The sun was low in the eastern skies
    When spoke the confident youth;
Sweet Psyche, all day, his hands and eyes
    Wiled from the clay uncouth,
Nor ceased when the shadows came up like spies
    That dog the steps of Truth.

He said, "I will do my will in spite
    Of the rising dark; for, see,

Half god, half brute, within the self-same shell,
Changers with every hour from dawn till even,
Who dream with angels in the gate of heaven,
And skirt with curious eyes the brinks of hell,
Children of Pan, whom some, the few, love well,
But most draw back, and know not what to say,
Poor shining angels, whom the hoofs betray,
Whose pinions frighten with their goatish smell.

Half brutish, half divine, but all of earth,
Half-way 'twixt hell and heaven, near to man,
The whole world's tangle gathered in one span,
Full of this human torture and this mirth:
Life with its hope and error, toil and bliss,
Earth-born, earth-reared, ye know it as it is.

I am laughing by the brook with her,
Splashed in its tumbling stir;
And then it is a blankness looms
As if I walked not there,
Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,
And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes
We sit where none espies;
Till a harsh change comes edging in
As no such scene were there,
But winter, and I were bent and thin,
And cinder-gray my hair.

We dance in heys around the hall,
Weightless as thistleball;
And then a curtain drops between,
As if I danced not there,
But wandered through a mounded green
To find her, I knew where.

March 1913.

    They are gone away,
No prayers could avail us to longer keep
The ships called out on the unknown deep,
We saw them sail off, some lingeringly,
Some suddenly summoned put out to sea;
They stepped aboard, and the planks were drawn in,
But their sweet, pale faces were free from sin;
As they turned to whisper one last good bye,
We sent after each one a bitter cry;
    We knew on that track,
    They would never come back,
    By night or day.

    Ah, we've closed dear eyes,
But God be thanked that they, one and all,
Had the heaven light touch them before the pall;
They saw the fair land that we could not see,
And one said, "Jesus is standing by me,"
And one, "The water of life I hear,"
And one, "There's no suffering nor sorrow here,"
One, ...

    The old year is dying,
    Its last hour is hieing
        Over the verge;
    The night winds are plying,
    And are mournfully sighing
        Its funeral dirge.

    And now, in its even,
    While its spirit is riven
        Through the bright zone,
    Beyond the heaven
    To whence it was given -
        To the unknown.

    Its sadness in ending
    Like a cloud is descending
        Over my soul,
    And the thoughts that are pending
    With the low winds are blending,
        Helping their dole.

    A year of existence
    Has passed to the distance
        Ne'er to return:
    To the right was resistance,
    From duty desistance,
        Nor would I learn.

    But duty neglected

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

The Lovers took within this ancient grove
Their last embrace; beside those crystal springs
The Hermit saw the Angel spread his wings
For instant flight; the Sage in yon alcove
Sate musing; on that hill the Bard would rove,
Not mute, where now the linnet only sings:
Thus everywhere to truth Tradition clings,
Or Fancy localises Powers we love.
Were only History licensed to take note
Of things gone by, her meagre monuments
Would ill suffice for persons and events:
There is an ampler page for man to quote,
A readier book of manifold contents,
Studied alike in palace and in cot.

Iron and granite and rust,
In a crumbling garden old,
Where the roses are paler than dust
And the lilies are green with gold,

Under the racing moon,
Inconscious of war or crime,
In a strange and ghostly noon,
It marks the oblivion of time.

The shadow steals through its arc,
Still as a frosted breath,
Fitful, gleaming, and dark
As the cold frustration of death.

But where the shadow may fall,
Whether to hurry or stay,
It matters little at all
To those who come that way.

For this is the dial of them
That have forgotten the world,
No more through the mad day-dream
Of striving and reason hurled.

Their heart as a little child
Only remembers the worth
Of beauty and love and the wild
Dark peace of the el...

In which the Author had taken Shelter during a violent Storm, Upon Seeing An Idiotic Youth Seated In The Chimney-Corner, Caressing A Broom.


'Twas on a night of wildest storms,
When loudly roar'd the raving main, -
When dark clouds shew'd their shapeless forms,
And hail beat hard the cottage pane, -

Tom Fool sat by the chimney-side,
With open mouth and staring eyes;
A batter'd broom was all his pride, -
It was his wife, his child, his prize!

Alike to him if tempests howl,
Or summer beam its sweetest day;
For still is pleas'd the silly soul,
And still he laughs the hours away.

Alas! I could not stop the sigh,
To see him thus so wildly stare, -
To mark, in ruins, Reason lie,
Callous alike to joy and care.

God bless thee, t...

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,
Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,
Against the pure ideal which has drawn
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,
Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
Thawed into sound: a winter fireside dream
Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
Of which it is an emblem; and the dear
Memory of one who might have tuned my song
To sweeter music by her delicate ear.


When heats as of a tropic clime
Bur...

I.
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!

II.
To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
And enfold you,
Ay, and hold you,
And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!

III.
You like us for a glance, you know
For a word’s sake
Or a sword’s sake,
All’s the same, whate’er the chance, you know.

IV.
And in turn we make you ours, we say
You and youth too,
Eyes and mouth too,
All the face composed of flowers, we say.

V.
All’s our own, to make the most of, Sweet
Sing and say for,
Watch and pray for,
Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!

VI.
But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
Though we prayed you,
Paid you, brayed ...